Is it more effective to build muscles and tone when lifting to do a full body workout 3 days per week (M W F) than to work out specific body parts on alternating days?

Current workout schedule is:

Monday: Upper body + 30 mins of cardio
Tuesday: Legs + 30 mins of cardio
Wednesday: Abs +30 mins of cardio
Thursday: Upper body +30 mins of cardio
Friday: Legs + 30 mins of cardio
Saturday: Abs + 30 mins of cardio
Sunday: Day off

I'm looking more to lose weight than to bulk up, at least until I hit 190 pounds or so. (currently 225 lbs).

Thanks for any help!

In my experience it is hard to lose a lot of weight while building muscle at the same time. I would focus on weight loss first. Keep on lifting, but not too low on reps, I like to keep it 10-15 reps when fat loss. I would do full body workouts instead of splitting.

It is important to do cardio as well. Here I really recommend high intensity interval training (HIIT) instead of long, slow running etc. HIIT really worked wonders for me.

I would do lifting 3 times a week and HIIT 2-3 times a week. I think it is important to have 1-2 days a week with no lifting and no HIIT. Maybe some slow, long cardio, but not a lot of it.

But the most important is your diet. You have to keep your calorie intake a little bit lower than your daily calorie maintenance level. This will result in losing weight (fat). Be careful not to go too far down on calories. Then you will lose much muscle as well. You want to keep as much muscle as possible, as lean muscle burns calories.

Be sure to eat enough protein (chicken, turkey, salmon, tuna etc) to not lose too much muscle mass.

My advice:
focus on weight loss first, but not too fast. Don't want to lose much muscle. When you reach 190 lbs, start bulking.

Hope this helps

If you are looking to lose weight, then skip the splits and do full-body exercises.

The more muscle groups you employ, the more calories you burn, and the more you keep your muscles working which prevents the muscle loss that accompanies fat loss.

Alternate your resistance days with rest or cardio days.

As geddy says, it is difficult to both lose weight and gain muscle at the same time, although it can happen. Don't worry about it. Lift your weights, lose fat, get stronger. It's all good. You won't 'bulk up'.

One thing you don't need when trying to lose weight is to do the low-weight, high-reps thing. It is unnecessary, and not terribly effective. Focus on lower reps and higher weight, and progressive overload.

Add my agreement here as well.

And also ditto the bit about losing the low weight/high rep stuff. That doesn't do anything except provide a different form of cardio.

Concentrate on full body and compound movements, make sure you have a full 48 hours between strength/weight lifting workouts, and fill in around that with cardio in various forms as you want to.

Thanks for the advice everyone =)
Always a pleasure to hear from you all.

Whether you do full body 2-3 days per week or some sort of upper/lower split while dieting... it's really not going to make much a difference at all. As long as the foundation is set, how you build the remainder is really a matter of preference.

Read the Conceptual Side of Weight Lifting sticky.

Working out specific body parts is generally suboptimal. It can be done effectively, but how most go about it isn't good.

Which is workable, assuming what comprises these workouts is "suitable."

try this:
Monday: Back-Biceps
Tuesday: Pilates-stretching-Abs
Wednesday: Chest-Triceps
Thursday: Legs-Abs.
Friday: Shoulders
Saturday: Pilates-stretching-Abs.

Its a tested and effective routine for gaining muscle mass. before you think much, you cannot make muscle and lose fat at the same time. no can do.

If you want to lose weight while MAINTAINING whatever muscle you have.

In the above routine, add 12 minutes of HIIT after the workout and make changes in your diet. no more carbs, apply the 60-30-10 rule. 60% protein, 30% fat, 10% carbs.

This will help you maintain muscle and gain a bit (say 10 pounds) of muscle at max.

And this is exactly what I meant above about most screwing things up when the focus on one body part at a time.

Training each muscle once per week is very suboptimal given what we know about protein metabolism.

very much agreed. a training split like whats been posted about is terrible for 99% of the training population. We are not bodybuilders, do not have a base of muscle and do not take steroids. so why do people train like BBers do? I don't get it. Isolation type movements and splits are ONLY useful for those who are in the advanced to elite level of training who want to put an emphasis in hypertrophy only and more than likely are taking steroids.

Focusing on full body compound movements is the correct way to train for the vast majority of the population by far. If you're hell bent on a 3 day full body split, do starting strength. If you want a 4 day a week split, do Westside for skinny bastards 3. If you want to do 6 days a week, I recommend a push/pull/legs movement pattern split. (basically starting shrength broken down into it's movement patterns per day)

Can't agree more with what was said already. Forget the stuff you read in the magazines. What you need is full body workout combined with solid cardio. I'm in a very similar situation, currently 225, working toward 190 and this has worked for me in the past.

Full body compound workouts is the best for overall weight loss and retaining muscle.

Good luck.